Friday, April 03, 2009

Electronic Intifada list some of the choice words of wisdom of the newly elected Foreign Secretary of Israel , Avigdor Lieberman, chair of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home - they hold a frightening 10% of Kneset seats) ) party and ex Moldovan night club bouncer.

He a resident of the illegal Israeli settlement of Noqedim in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank.

Shortly after he moved, aged 20 in 1978 to Isael Shortly after his move to Israel, Lieberman joined the now-illegal Kach Party, an organization so right wing that Israel banned it outright from running in elections. Like Hamas, the group is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, Canada, the European Union and the United States.

# In 1998, Lieberman called for the flooding of Egypt by bombing the Aswan Dam in retaliation for Egyptian support for Yasser Arafat.

# In 2001, as Minister of National Infrastructure, Lieberman proposed that the West Bank be divided into four cantons, with no central Palestinian government and no possibility for Palestinians to travel between the cantons.

# In 2002, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Lieberman in a Cabinet meeting saying that the Palestinians should be given an ultimatum that "At 8am we'll bomb all the commercial centers ... at noon we'll bomb their gas stations ... at two we'll bomb their banks ..."

# In 2003, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Lieberman called for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses to take them there.Then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to grant amnesty to 250 Palestinian prisoners, Lieberman said, “It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.”

# In May 2004, Lieberman proposed a plan that called for the transfer of Israeli territory with Palestinian populations to the Palestinian Authority. Likewise, Israel would annex the major Jewish settlement blocs on the Palestinian West Bank. If applied, his plan would strip roughly one-third of Israel's Palestinian citizens of their citizenship. A "loyalty test" would be applied to those who desired to remain in Israel. This plan to trade territory with the Palestinian Authority is a revision of Lieberman's earlier calls for the forcible transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their land. Lieberman stated in April 2002 that there was "nothing undemocratic about transfer."

# Also in May 2004, he said that 90 percent of Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens would "have to find a new Arab entity" in which to live beyond Israel's borders. "They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost," he said.

# In May 2006, Lieberman called for the killing of Arab members of Knesset who meet with members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

In addition - In January 2009, during Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, Lieberman implied Israel should consider using nuclear weapons in Gaza, and that Israel “must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II. Then, too, the occupation of the country was unnecessary.”